Dr. Dorianne Cara Weil
Influential Leadership: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
Dorianne Cara Weil and Gilan Gork - Influential Leadership: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
- [Host] It is three minutes past, so we are going to get started. I’ll start by introducing Dr. D. Dr. D. is a clinical and organisational psychologist with over 30 years of experience in hospital, private and corporate practise. She is an internationally recognised and respected inspirational speaker and an expert in personal development and human relations, and has addressed over a hundred thousand people, and facilitated workshops in 58 countries. Dr. D. also serves as a mediator, facilitator, and executive coach. So finally, I’d like to leave you with a quote about Dr. D. that was spoken by Nelson Mandela, and it goes like this. “I don’t know if you are aware of the hope and inspiration you offer, and the difference you make to so many lives. Dori, thank you for the great contribution you make to building our nation.”
- Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And I always feel very humbled when I listen to those words. It was a great privilege to have a relationship with such an iconic and inspirational speaker, not speaker, leader, of course. And that’s what we are going to be talking about tonight is Nelson Mandela. So, you know, it was quite interesting to me when I was approached by Wendy, and by Judy, actually, to say, you know, for your next talk on Lockdown University, on the psychological track that I’ve been presenting, we want you to talk about leadership. And my immediate reaction was, well, you know, maybe we should get a very seasoned business strategist, or a kind of expert team builder guru. Where does this fit in into the psychological track that is really meant to offer immediate take-home value in terms of personal development, familial development, relationally, socially, and human development in general? Stuff that you could think about, that you resonate with, and that you can use in your daily life. We’ve had so much amazing information to process, and consider about politics, and about history, and particular, and about art, and from thought leaders and international authors that kind of touch us sometimes personally, but from a cognitive and mental point of view. And so I thought, okay, how does this, why are they asking for this? And it was actually very intentional, and I could see it straight away. What do you need to be an excellent leader today? Particularly, what do you need to have people really follow you? And what does leadership mean?
If you don’t know, we talk so much about personal leadership and being a leader, which is referred to, sometimes referring to people who don’t have teams to lead, but they have leadership quality. And how do you develop those kind of qualities, and how do you develop the kind of self-awareness and intentionality that is necessary to influence teams to follow you? And the minute I thought about influence, of course I thought about my friend and colleague, who talks about influential leadership in a very studied, and considered, and experiential, and practical manner all over the world. And it’s my great pleasure when I approach Gilan Gork, who’s an expert mentalist and leadership expert, amongst many other things. He absolutely said that he’d love to have this conversation with me in front of you about influential leadership and what it means, and when we were talking about it, we thought, well, you know, there are, I mean, we knew leadership in a particular way. We knew it as strength, and we knew it as commanded control. And I know that when I work in organisations now, but they ask for something different, almost as if there’s a way of new awareness that kind of happened since the pandemic of people wanting connection, and contact, and engagement, and the creation of an internal morale, and a support system, and something different, and something more, both from their people and from their organisation. So we thought that actually what got you there or what got you there might not get you here in today’s age.
And what is the difference between then and now? What are some of the tenons, and how can we develop them in terms of modern and particularly influential leadership? So let me tell you a little about bit about Gilan. Gilan is a global authority on influential leadership, a bestselling author, and an executive coach. He’s worked with leaders in over 40 countries from Fortune 500 companies, governments, the military, organisations like NATO, where he got such high acclaim. It was wonderful seeing the feedback from NATO, Gilan. You were the star there. His unique perspective as an expert mentalist and ability to deconstruct influence into practical frameworks is very much sought after all over the world, and this helps leaders to predictively elevate their impact, which, of course, is what leadership is all about, provided you’ve got a purpose, and provided you have a strategy as a start. So these are some of the things that we want to talk about. So just as a start, Gilan, thank you for being with us on Lockdown University. What is different now? Why do we say what was, was? And it sounds like we need a new kind of expanded awareness, and perhaps different kinds of skills today than we used to, especially in terms of thinking of leadership? And what is leadership, by the way? Let’s start with that.
Thank you, I’ve got a few questions coming in there. I’ll start with what is leadership, but before I even do, thank you so much for inviting me to have this conversation with you. And I’ve always so loved and respected your work and the leaders who I’ve worked with, who have worked with you just always think such high acclaim, so I feel privileged, you know? We call each other friends and colleagues, and I’m just so excited for this conversation, so you asked a couple of questions there, and I think a good departure point is, you know, what is influence? There really is a simple answer to that. It looked like you wanted to ask or say something there. Did you?
I want to ask, is leadership influence? So what is influence, but what is leadership? Because it’s sort of used quite loosely, the term.
Yeah, so I mean, leadership is influence. I do believe that. I learned that first, you know, many, many, many years ago through John Maxwell. And he’s famous for saying, you know, leadership is influenced, nothing more, nothing less. And if we take it one step further and say, okay, in the context of business, what is the job of a leader? And of course, we’re separating management, which is about maintaining directions, systems and processes, and so on. And although management is a part of leadership, leadership is really not about maintaining people’s direction, but being able to move people in new directions. And for that we require influence, and so to do that, to move people in direction, or to shape the direction of an organisation or a leadership team, so everyone is moving in the same direction, the role, the job of the leader is ultimately to influence the culture of the team or the organisation to be one of high performance, where people feel that they’re accountable to the culture of high performance, and of course, anytime we talk about high performance, that’s always going to be contextual to whatever the strategy is of the organisation. Because a culture of high performance may be high performance for one strategy, but put it into a different company, different industry, it may not be the right culture of high performance in that context. So that is how I would explain influence in a business context as leadership.
Okay then before we even start with influential leadership, and for that to really be successful, it needs to be some kind of shared vision, or some kind of inclusiveness and buy in at least in establishing the vision, which gets translated into a culture. So we are moving towards what? Towards something that is the culture, the strategy, the direction of that particular company. And the leader is someone who not only keeps it on track, but who influences the development and movement towards the winning strategy within that kind of particular culture. Now, as I think of it, what I want to say is then can you bring, ‘cause we are going to ask you what the characteristics are in order to be able to do that, does that not apply to kind of a parent as a leader, or a partner as a leader or, you know, leadership in so many other different contexts, influencing people to maintain excellence and winning strategies in a variety of contexts?
Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think that leadership is often a term that people reserve for people who are, you know, high up in business, and have the title on their business card, or they’re a politician. But the truth is that if influence is leadership, in every single human interaction, whether you are interacting with your family, your friends, and even a stranger, there is always an exchange of influence. And so that means that the question we should ask ourselves is not actually, am I a leader? The question that anybody should be asking in any context is, what kind of leader am I? Because we are always influencing. And so I agree with you. In the context of families and other social contexts, many of the principles and techniques will remain the same. It’s just the context that changes. You asked an important question earlier as well, which I think fits into this. You know, what has changed? You know, what was the old way? What’s the new way? You know, like we mentioned, what got you here won’t get you there. And so, you know, I think that the one thing that has remained the same is that a business is there because it has a purpose to exist, right? It’s there for a reason. And of course, the goal of a business is to win, so that it can obviously be able to fulfil on its purpose of why it exists. And so I think, really, it’s that context that is changing, so what winning means is changing. And what we’re seeing, and you alluded to it earlier, is that the focus is now moving more towards purpose, beyond profit. And so it’s about having a purpose-led vision. And so one of those characteristics of a modern leader, of an impactful influential leader is somebody who has purpose-led influence, and of course, we can unpack that more if you like to, but I’ll stop there.
Very much so, I’d like to, and I also want to ask you, you know, we are not saying that the pendulum has swung so much that it is actually all about purpose only. We do want profit as well. And so what people are talking about is purpose for profit that the two I gave them, the people, the business as well. But if you become a business who doesn’t have an intentional purpose, and all the businesses that I’ve been working with lately, and I love your comment on this as well, definitely are much more aware and engaged in a broader purpose of social responsibility and of giving than they ever were, and that leaders seem to epitomise that arm, which they bring that caring and breadth of encompassing other people, which they bring to bear inside their companies in terms of the way they engage with their people and outside their companies by incorporating it into a greater purpose. So would you say purpose for profit, purpose and profit?
Yes, definitely, you need, so I mean, actually, Simon Sinek has a wonderful analogy where he said that money is like fuel. You know, when you buy a car, you don’t buy a car in order so that you can buy more fuel. You buy a car so that it can get you somewhere, and business is similar in that sense. We shouldn’t run a business in order to make money. The money is the fuel that helps us further the cause of that business, for the very reason why that business exists, and the problems that it solves, and the people who it serves. So we need the fuel, and so the profit is really important. So, you know, they’re just two polarities, right? It’s not an either/or. It’s an and/both. So we need to move between those polarities, between purpose and profit, and help the organisation.
That’s interesting. With awareness, there is a different emphasis. And if we talk about awareness, can you have good leadership without self-awareness? I mean, isn’t that absolutely essential? So I want to unpack that, because I know that you’ve done a lot of research, and you do talk about that in quite an in-depth manner, but I wanted to ask you before that, the characteristics of good leaders, would you be able to say what they are?
Sure, I mean, listen, that is a big question, and I’m sure that we could probably write quite an extensive list of characteristics. So to simplify it, I’ll give three characteristics, and let me know, by the way, I love Venn diagrams, and models, and seeing things visually. So if you like, I’ve got a Venn diagram that can explain how these characters are created once I’ve given them to you. So you let me know if you want me to draw that out on a pad of paper, but the three characteristics really are, I’ve really mentioned one of them, which is to be purpose-led. And so that’s the first one. The other one is to have conscious congruence. And that will be in the context of that purpose. I’m happy to share a story of a friend of mine in business to kind of illustrate what conscious congruence means.
Please do.
Sure. Well, firstly, let me mention that some research by PWC, when they surveyed leaders, and 79% of leaders said that they believe that purpose is essential to business success. But only 68% of them said that businesses use purpose as a leadership decision-making guidepost. So there’s an interesting kind of discrepancy. You know, a lot of people are talking about purpose, but not actually living it, right? And to live purpose and to live our values takes a certain amount of conscious congruence. We need to be very conscious, so here’s a story of of a friend of mine. His name is Pepe Marais, and he’s one of the co-founders of one of the most successful ad agencies here in South Africa called Joe Public United, and they’re all about purpose. In fact, he even wrote a book, and he’s got an amazing story about how he discovered his purpose, and boils it down to even one word, which is grow.
But their full purpose statement, I might get this a little bit wrong. I’m going by memory, so their full purpose statement is to be the fertile soil that grows our people, our clients, our people, and our country. That’s their purpose statement, and that’s their guiding post. Now, was it last year or the year before, they were approached by Accenture to be acquired? It was the first acquisition that Accenture was doing on the African continent in the space. And you can imagine for somebody building a business, I mean this was like a deal. I don’t know the exact numbers, but it was like anybody who starts a business, it was their dream kind of deal. But they asked themselves the question and they said, well, would selling a hundred percent of our business to a foreign entity be growing our people, our clients, our people, our country? And they said, “Well, that doesn’t grow our country.” And so they turned down that offer, and essentially, yeah, they turned it down, the dream offer. By the way, they went on to have their best year ever. Can you imagine just the message that that sends, that congruence, that that very conscious congruence, and so you can imagine how, in every decision that’s being made, every leadership decision, every interaction, there’s a high level of self-awareness of, am I being congruent with our purpose, with our values? And so I would say that conscious congruence is the second characteristic.
No, I know a little bit about that story. And what I also remember about that is that you say, am I being consciously congruent to our purpose? One of the things that I think was so exciting was that are we being, so there was such collaboration, and therefore, buy-in, and from that kind of collaboration and buy-in, can you imagine the excitement and the enthusiasm that it generates, because nothing brings people closer than a shared emotional event. And that kind of feeling of we are really serious, we have defined our purpose. I, all of us, are a part of the jigsaw puzzle that have created the picture. I’m going to be part of making it happen. And we are seeing that so intentionally with decisions that are made every day by our leadership. Can you imagine the respect? Now even if you translate that, because we just mentioned it earlier, if you’ve got family values, and you see your parents living up to those values of authenticity, say, integrity, care, and their decisions and their behaviour match, and the values may not even be as kind of clearly stated, but we know that kids learn by three ways: example, and example, and example. And this is what they see and what they live by, how important that impact is. So you can take that kind of conscious congruence as being so important and inclusive everywhere. And we are talking about businesses now. So that’s a very important characteristic, to step up and not be seduced by the profit.
[Gilan] Exactly.
You have to be serious about the purpose.
Yeah, and it’s funny you say seduced, because actually the third characteristic that I want to mention is being a responsive leader instead of a reactive leader, and there are many temptations and things that can seduce us, and it may be our initial reaction based on things like our mindset. And I would love to go there and talk about mindset, because I believe that that part of self-influence is kind of the key to everything that we’re talking about, but to respond instead of to react, we can intervene with ourselves when we find ourselves being pulled in ways that are not consciously congruent. And so we’re able to then, you know, it’s that famous quote from Viktor Frankl, and I know that you love this quote as well. “Between stimulus and response, there’s that space,” and in that space, our ability to, you know, our power to choose our response, so that is exactly what I mean by responsive influence.
Yeah, that is so important. I mean, we are talking once again about leadership, kind of big leadership of companies and of teams and organisations, and the kind of characteristics that are important, but even if you ground that down to individuals, how often do we react rather than respond? And it’s very interesting from a biological and a developmental point of view that that kind of reaction comes from the primitive brain that was designed for survival called the, it’s a part of the brain called the amygdala, where we respond immediate, we don’t respond, in fact, we react, and all of the oxygen and blood goes into that kind of emotional reaction of fight, flight or freeze, which we do immediately, because it was, you know, either eat or be eaten. If you don’t react immediately like that, you could be breakfast to a lion. But unfortunately what happens is that in modern day, we often react spontaneously, and then only get to the thought response, which could be just a second or two or a minute of thinking that comes out of a different part of the brain, and much, much more intentional. So the reaction like road rage can get you into a lot of trouble when you pull the trigger, your reaction like losing it in a very aggressive manner. Similarly, sometimes that reaction can be positive, like, you know, if your child runs across the road, you don’t have time to think, well, if I also run across the road, I could be run over. You have to respond. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t, but most often it doesn’t. And so I’m so pleased that you highlighting the importance of intentional response that comes out of a different, the adult part of the brain.
You mentioned something interesting. You mentioned that, you know, we’ve got positive reactions as well. In fact, I want to draw something out quickly. I call this the reactive doubling down spiral. And this is one of the dangers, and we’re seeing so much change in the world. That’s nothing new, but I want to show you is a kind of a patter that happens. I’m going to draw this out here, and try to hold it close enough. If we’ve got over here, you know, your influence, your impact, your effectiveness, and if over here, we’ve got change over time, so I’ll just put change at the bottom here, and I’ll just put impact over here. You know, if you’ve reached a certain level of success in your life, you have developed, so let’s say that this line over here is the success, you’ve developed, along that journey, certain reactions that have served you. It may be a way of thinking, it may be, you know, whatever heuristics that have helped you to be successful, certain approaches, behaviours, leadership styles, all of that stuff, right?
[Dorianne] Right.
But then change obviously is increasing over time. And so when things change and we’ve got a new context, whatever that may be, right, there may be several at the same time, our results, our impact and results start to plateau. And so what do we do in our results when things start to plateau? This is where the reactive doubling down spiral, I’ll just write it here, reactive doubling down, whoops, down spiral. We land up doubling down, excuse my handwriting.
On our safe behaviours.
Without, and it’s unconscious, right? So it got us results in the past as we doubled down on it, but they don’t work. Those things that were strengths and our weaknesses in the new context, so what do we do? We double down again, and we double down again with all good intention, and maybe even being purpose-led, but because we don’t have that responsiveness, we double down, and it’s only when we start developing that level of mindfulness and responsiveness that we can actually start getting that back up again, so it’s a really big trap, you know, the things that used to work for us, and those, what used to be positive reactions can actually start to work against us, and we need to be able to notice that.
So once again, I’m going to ask you if you can think of an example of certain mindsets and behaviours that you developed over a period of time, perhaps in a particular context, that always worked for you. And then if you could maybe give us an example of how that context has changed, how the same external factors might require a different response, but you haven’t developed a different response. You only know your mindset and your reaction, and you think if I do it more, and if I do it more, and if I try harder, you know, and I think the thing that we are going to have to unpack is the lack of awareness of results. How long does it take when you see that the impact, because that was the one side of your graph that you were having, and the success because of that impact, and the leadership ability that you had because of the influence, just isn’t there anymore? How many times, what do you have to see to say, “Hang on, you know, I can’t keep knocking my head against a brick wall and then wondering why it hurts.”
Yeah, yeah, so firstly, I think that something that I’m seeing in working with companies, and this is not a brand new thing, I think it’s been happening for a very long time, is that generally teams, besides maybe the odd routine 360 degree assessment, they’ve got feedback-poor environments within teams, as opposed to having a feedback-rich environment where people feel the kind of safety to engage in open debate around key issues, and in a way to give each other feedback that’s not taken so personally, so people don’t have enough feedback loops coming in that could give early signals that things aren’t working the same way. and so to make that practical, I’ll share with you, you know, micromanaging. This is something that I’ve had to work on a tonne, and it’s something that, you know, you mentioned command control earlier. So, and it’s something that a lot of my clients still battle with is just being able to, you know, to stop micromanaging or stop stepping in, and taking the work themselves, and, you know, one needs to notice what is happening under the surface that is creating that. But perhaps somebody who’s especially talented and good at what they do have reached a certain level of success. And this certainly, and when I say somebody, this is my story as well, you know, and we did that because we were the geniuses, and we had our people, our little helpers, carry out all of our tasks, right? And so, which almost creates a bit of a leadership bottleneck in organisations. And it’s only when we realise that that’s no longer working, for example, as the business grows, so that that could be a change that happens. There’s more. You need to be able to leverage people more to be able to keep the quality and volume of workup.
Before I, I don’t want to lose that track, but I also don’t want to do something that I think is so important in relation to what you’re saying. And that is the cultivation not only of the awareness of the growing ineffectiveness that is driven by an internal mindset that’s translated into behaviour, not working for you anymore, that doesn’t work for you anymore. That kind of humility. And I would want to say that it’s a different sort of humility that needs to be that characteristic of a good leader today. We were talking about what the characteristics are, because you have to be able to say that I want the feedback as a gift. The feedback is a gift to me. Please tell me. And in order to do that, you have to have a particular kind of culture. You might not hear what people don’t say. I can’t always hear what you don’t say. I sometimes can develop that depth of awareness of seeing that the results aren’t playing out in the same way, but I often can’t. So if we’re talking about unpacking those characteristics, you’re saying a flatter structure, more openness and inclusiveness, better communication and encouragement of making mistakes, more feedback, much more, seeing that kind of communication not as a personal criticism, but rather, as I say, as a gift, those kind of characteristics, something that I wanted to highlight. So please go on in how one does that.
Yeah, look, I mean, everything you’re mentioning there is is spot on. And I think what what’s very important is to understand what this awareness actually, what are we trying to be aware of, right? We are talking about behaviours here. We’re talking about things like, you know, noticing when your impact has gone down, or things like micromanaging, and things like asking for feedback. And what you’re saying here is right. We should see feedback as a gift. But there’s something very, very important that stops so many leaders from actually seeing, 'cause the leader has to see the feedback as the gift to create a culture where people are giving feedback. And so here’s the problem, it comes down to self-influence, so self-influence is one of the three areas of influence that I believe every leader should develop. The other two areas are influence with other people, and then influence with the course bigger than oneself, which really speaks to purpose, but we can deconstruct self-influence into mindset and mindfulness.
And the mindset piece is so important to what we’re talking about here, so I’ll give an analogy, a carrot analogy to explain mindset, because a lot of people have got very different ideas of what mindset actually is. So here, let’s say that I’ve got a carrot, and trying to get my art skills up here, but let’s say that there’s a carrot, right? Now we have the stuff that’s above the surface. And so this would be our reactions and behaviours. And then, and we can see this, because this is in our field of conscious awareness, right? And so perhaps asking for feedback and accepting it, you know, we can see that people are doing that. But what about people who aren’t asking for feedback? What’s happening below the surface that’s mostly unconscious? And so what we call carrots is actually a root to what’s happening above the surface. And that root starts with our beliefs. And I’m going to give you a practical example of beliefs that can sabotage this whole process here. But those beliefs give us certain assumptions.
[Dorianne] Right.
Assumptions about ourselves, about others, about how the world works, and in certain contexts, those assumptions will evoke certain emotions. So for example, if I’ve got an assumption that somebody giving me feedback is an attack, in the context where people give me feedback, I’m going to have very different emotions than if I see feedback as a gift, right? And our emotions drive our reactions and behaviours. Now our beliefs and assumptions, many of which we are totally unconscious, and by the way, a belief really is just an idea that we have such absolute certainty about that it becomes our truth. And so this is what I call mindset. Over here, I’ll just put a star. So our beliefs and assumptions are a lens to how we perceive the world, and that’s really it.
Our mindset. Can you just hold that up still just for a minute?
Yeah, sure.
Because I want to just talk about that personally, because I think in the context of leadership and self-influence, which is really the core, because I think that what you’re saying is what you believe about yourself and others, you create assumptions about your beliefs, and those assumptions you don’t even question. Those assumptions are your truth. Those assumptions are so entrenched in perhaps your DNA, what you’ve seen, your past history, past experiences that create those beliefs, that make you see the world through certain lenses. And you assume certain things, then you feel certain things based on that, and that drives your behaviour, so if we, I just had such a very good example of this recently, where it was in an organisation where the boss, who was a woman, and she was talking to a team of different people, different genders and ages. There were about seven in the team. And all she said to them, and we had fun deconstructing this, and getting to the mindsets of the individuals, Gilan, all she said to them was, “Come into my office next Friday at five.” That was it. The beginning, the middle, and the end of the statement. Now you talk to the different people about what they believe, what they heard, the one said, “Well, I’m definitely going to be fired.” Where did that come from? If you ground down even further, that person really didn’t feel good enough in lots of contexts. They took that feeling of their own inadequacy into many contexts.
In the last job they were in, they were fired. I believed that it was because of that belief of not feeling good enough, but anyway, he believed he was going to be fired. That was his assumption, his belief of not being good enough. The assumption was, “I’m going to be fired on Friday.” The emotion was, “Oh, well, I don’t care.” You know, “I’m just, it’s over.” The emotion was frustration, sadness, and the kind of feeling of predictability that this always happens to me. The behaviour, that was the emotion, the behaviour that came out of that was, “Well, I might as well just not come to work tomorrow, and that report that I’m going to do will be shoddy. I don’t care, I’m not reading over it again. And I might as well, you know, not put in the effort to be warm and friendly to my colleagues, as I have been before.” Now, what do you think is going to happen next Friday at five? If that boss had an idea that they were going to give that person a raise, his own behaviour that came out of the belief, into the assumption, into the emotion, into the reaction, into the behaviour, into the part that people could see, your carrot above the ground, is going to dictate the outcome.
[Gilan] Yeah.
And that’s how we get into those self-fulfilling prophecies all the time, so I’m here to say to you, how do we not? How do influence on the homestead?
Well, firstly, I think we need to acknowledge that there are so many beliefs that, I mean, most of them, that we cannot, that we’re not aware of, and I’ll give one kind of personal story to help understand this. When I was younger, I was told that I was really, really smart, like when I was in primary school. and so I’ve given children lots of positive validation. I’m pretty sure that everybody listening here has probably said to a child at some point, “Oh, you’ve solved that puzzle so quickly, you’re so clever.” Now what I heard as a child, and what children generally will hear is, “Oh, well, if I’m not able to solve this puzzle quickly and perfectly, then it means I’m not clever.” And “Oh, I managed to solve it faster than Billy over there. And so does that mean that I was born smarter than Billy?” And so the unintended consequence is that this seed, this idea, which forms into a belief is planted, which is, we’re born with a certain amount of smartness, right? I was born smarter than you. There’s a certain level, right? Stanford professor Carol Dweck’s amazing body of work around fixing growth mindsets deals a lot with this. And so if I land up growing with this belief that humans are born with a certain fixed level of intelligence, and if I have now built an identity of someone who has been born with a high level of intelligence, both from validation from other people when I was growing up, but also, who I am, then I will start to see every situation as something that’s going to validate that, and I’m going to always want to seek situations where I’m going to look smart and feel smart to validate that, well, I was born with a high level of intelligence, and so similarly, we’ll end up having a threshold for how much efforts and learning we’ll put in to solve certain challenges, certain problems, before that challenge starts to feel like a threat. Why?
Because maybe it threatens, I feel vulnerable that maybe it’s going to reveal to me that I’m actually unintelligent, that I wasn’t born with the high enough intelligence than I thought, so now the same can be applied to feedback. So I’m not going to see if I’ve got a fixed mindset, and I believe that us humans are all born with a certain fixed level of intelligence, and I’ve convinced myself that I’ve got a very high level of intelligence, I’m going to see any feedback, I’m going to take it very personally, because it could threaten to reveal, even just to myself, that actually I don’t know what I’m doing, and maybe I’ve got a lower level of innate intelligence than what I think. It’s very hard for someone like that. And usually people are totally unconscious that that’s even a belief that they have. It’s very difficult for someone like that to see the feedback as a gift. They’ll see it as a threat, and then a leader with that mindset, that fixed mindset, will end up creating a culture where there’s a very low feedback environment, so what we need to be able to do is to start at the top, and to realise the actions and the reactions and behaviours. And so we go, oh, well, it seems that I’m not asking for a lot of feedback from people about myself and setting that example. And then you might go one step lower in the carrot analogy, and you might say, okay, well, what are the emotions that’s driving that behaviour? Maybe you say to yourself, well, because I feel scared that it’s going to reveal something to me that’s going to make me doubt myself. You know, all the imposter syndrome can start coming, and I feel very vulnerable. And then the question is, well, what assumptions am I making that’s causing me to have those emotions?
And sometimes we figure out what the belief is that’s created that assumption, and sometimes we don’t even need to. You know, Nancy Kline’s wonderful book, “Time to Think,” you know, she talks about helping people to think of new ideas when you’re listening to them talking, because you can ask what she calls an incisive question, where you are noticing what the assumption is that they’re making, and you’re replacing it with a more freeing assumption. And so, you know, one might say to a leader, and leaders can ask this of themselves when they’ve got the right level of mindfulness, you know, if I assume that the feedback was a gift that’s going to help me to grow, and there’s no reflection of my fixed ability, if I don’t see it as a threat, but as a gift, how would that change how I feel? And so that’s a game that we can play. We can keep bringing in different ways of restating the assumption, or making new assumptions, and seeing how it goes, and by the way, all latest research shows that actually, we can, through effort and method, grow our intelligence to the highest levels in the world, and that there are no fixed levels of innate intelligence. So that’s what we do to become, we have a certain level of mindfulness, and we work from the behaviours down, until we can find a better assumption.
So I want to just say to people, it’s another word that is kind of a bit buzzy, but very, very important. I mean, people sometimes substitute mindfulness for real self-awareness, or for presence, being fully present and aware in the moment with all of your senses absolutely receptive, without your head being out to lunch, and your body being here, you know, really, and there are lots of mindfulness skills, and I know that you practise them, and you teach them, you certainly do teach them. So in order to get to that, the first thing that you see in, or let me ask you, do people not see, even before they say I need feedback, they might not even be at that place where they say that I need feedback. Do they not see that their patterns of behaviour, the results are easy to see, the effect, the consequences of same, same behaviour are not bringing the same kind of results? Is that not even at a higher level? And they say, the first question surely is, what the hell is going on here? Why is this not working anymore? Instead of spiralling down, you’ve got to reach that point to say something different even before they say, perhaps I need that.
Yeah, there’ll be certain leading and lagging indicators. And again, it depends on the context of it. There will be warning signs, and our mindset is go, which is the lens through which we actually interpret everything, is going to also change how we perceive that feedback. Sometimes we ignore feedback, because, and not necessarily feedback from others, but even just environmental, like looking at results. So for example-
[Dorianne] I-
Sorry, what did you say?
Hello? Listening.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
So if I’m seeing that things around me are starting to fall to pieces, if I’m trying to protect, and we’ll use that same kind of fixed mindset as an example, if I believe that I’m brilliant, and I’ve built a team around me who all believes that I’m where I am 'cause I was born with some level of brilliance, that I’m this genius kind of hero leader, then it’ll be far more likely that I’m going to blame external circumstances, or maybe even other people, for the reason why certain things are falling apart, and why we didn’t achieve certain things. And so I may not actually see that. So we need to have, so there’s actually five facets to mindfulness that we can use as tools, and so the first one is describing, and that is being able to, sorry, not describing, observing. So first is being able to observe our inner experience. So that would be sensations, and cognitions or thoughts, our emotions and so on, right? So we are observing and observing what’s around us. So observing is the first facet. The next one is describing. Can we label? Can we put it in words, so we can acknowledge what our inner experience is?
You know, things like emotional literacy also really helps with that. Most people can’t name more than five, you know, emotions, but there’s so many, and so how are we able to label our inexperience? Then the third facet of mindfulness is acting with awareness. So that’s the opposite of being on autopilot. We’re attending to the activity of the moment. The fourth one, and this is where it starts getting very interesting with what we’re talking about, is non-judgment of inner experience. And you know, our mind is a judging machine. We judge things as good, and we try and cling onto them. And then, you know, nothing else kind of matches up to it, could be the clinging onto these good experiences. We judge things as bad, and we push them away, and we judge them neutral, and ignore them. So being able to develop a non-judgment, a non-evaluative stance towards things also gives us that head space. And the fifth one is non-reactivity to inexperience. So instead of getting caught up in that river of emotion and getting pulled away by it, it’s about being able to climb out and stand on the riverbank, and watch the river of emotion flowing past without reacting so that we can respond. Those are the five facets that can help us to create that self-awareness.
So you have got programmes that teach those facets of mindfulness, and also help change your mindset. And I think that as I listen to you, because there’s this, I want to ask you more about the journey and the how, because what it sounds to me like is if we do that carrot analogy, and you hold that up, and you will see above the ground those leaves and things that grow on the top, but they’re dependent on the strength and the nurturing of the root, in other words, the mindset that is below the surface. What I’m learning from you is that you actually go down to build up. So you’re starting off from what you see, and hear what other people see and hear, all of those, that green stuff that is above the ground, you grind down further to understand what you’re feeling, what the assumptions are, what your beliefs are, and then in order to get even greener, thicker foliage on the top to get a fatter kind of carrot, what you have to do is change your mindset in conjunction with mindfulness, which inform those beliefs, assumptions and emotions, result in it. Now, what you do with leaders is just that, right? And I know that you have stages that are more complicated than that. Do you want to just talk to us, please for a few minutes of the how you start and go about it, to get that kind of change and that connection with your team, so that you, in that kind of organisation where there’s trust, there is a flatter kind of structure, inclusivity, feedback, good communication that we are talking about, still a sense of the authority without being authoritarian, where you hear people in those teams saying, “You know what, I will lay down and die for that person,” or “I will follow them everywhere.”
Sure, I’ll draw this out, and hopefully this acts as a model that any leader can take and start to build on. So let me explain the different areas of influence really, really quickly, how they produce those three characteristics, and I’ll just put it in a Venn diagram, and then I’ll explain also how that helps create a team and a culture that you’ve just described, where everybody’s in it for the team’s win, and there’s that kind of what I call influence fluidity, the flow of influence in a team that keeps everybody accountable to the strategic purpose and to the high performance culture, and accountable to each other ultimately.
[Dorianne] Right.
So what I’ll quickly draw here is the three areas of influence, and I love Venn diagrams, because they just kind of show me the relationship between things. I’ve already mentioned them earlier. So there’s influence with others. So I’ll just put in shorthand here, influence with others. And so this often is what, you know, various leadership programmes would teach. Here’s you got to do and say things in this way, in these situations, these are the leadership styles, and all of that kind of stuff, right? But influence with others, which, of course, is vital to leadership. Then what we mention is that you also have to have influence with a cause that’s bigger than, I’ll just put here with the cause, that’s bigger than just yourself. That is a purpose. Now there’s three layers to purpose. There’s the organization’s purpose, why it exists. There’s everyone’s personal individual sense of purpose. And then you’ve got what, you know, the strategic, the highest strategic priority of the team, which is generally what the team is trying to, a purpose of the team is trying to achieve a goal within the next, say three to 12 months or thereabout, the absolute most important thing that the company needs to be able to fulfil on, so there’s three levels to that. And then we’ve got here self-influence, and self-influence, like I mentioned, is deconstructed into mindfulness and mindset.
So what you’ll end up seeing over here is at the intersection of influence with the cause, with purpose and influence with others, we have purpose-led leadership. I’ll just write here purpose-led, where we have influence with others, and self-influence. This is where we have responsive leadership instead of reactive. And here where we have self-influence and influence with a cause bigger than ourselves, with purpose, this is where we are able to be consciously congruent with that strategic purpose, consciously congruent. So it’s by developing these three areas of influence. So that’s what I help leaders to do is to develop them, in order to have these characteristics. Now self-influence is where I would start, and one needs to develop that sense of mindfulness and understand the concepts. But how does this then also fall into creating a highly, highly functional team? And so, you know, many people are familiar, and I’m a big fan of Patrick Lencioni and his work, and he speaks a lot about the five dysfunctions of a team, and one of the, kind of the bottom, dysfunction, he’s got a pyramid, and I’ll just kind of draw it here, reimagined in a circular format, is where you need to have trust. If people aren’t able to be vulnerable with each other, if people don’t think that they’re on, that they’ve got the same agenda, the same goals, all of these things will start to influence the level of trust between people. Now remember that our mindset may not even allow us to see feedback as a gift. We may not be able to receive feedback.
We may not be able to give feedback properly. That inner game of influence, that self-influence can really harm our capacity to be able to, that inner capacity to be able to develop really trusting relationships. To be able to lean into vulnerability takes a certain amount of self-influence. Now if there’s trust that’s absent from a team, then people are not going to engage in what I call conscious conflicts. Lencioni just calls it conflict. But just for this model here, I call it conscious conflict. So that is open, passionate debate around key issues, right? And when people don’t engage in that kind of quality conflict, then there’s no commitment, because people don’t commit to decisions that they didn’t feel that they were part of. And also, you don’t get the full robustness of everyone’s thinking, but that’s another story. Now, when people aren’t able to engage in conscious conflict, and they’re not committing to decisions, then what lands up happening is there’s an avoidance of accountability. How do you hold somebody accountable to something that they didn’t even commit to in the first place, and that there wasn’t that absolute clarity? And when there’s an avoidance of accountability, that’s when people then start to focus on their own results, perhaps personal ambitions, their own recognitions. And as Lencioni says, it is inattention to team results, which further exacerbates the trust issue.
So what we are saying, and you’ve done it in a diagrammatic way, which I think is easy to see, for me, I think that the most important thing is that one thing really builds on another, and that it has the domino kind of effect. So you’re grinding down into how do you develop that kind of trust and connection as a start, as a springboard in the beginning? Once you’ve got that, what is the openness that, well, that’s done in a way through authenticity and vulnerability. How do you help people do that when their whole way of being and their whole is that vulnerability shows weakness, and leaders aren’t weak, it’s counterintuitive to many things that they have. And then it’s only through seeing that the effect of that kind of culture, which leads to open debate, conscious conflict, the resolution of problems, the feeling that you’ve been included in decisions that concern you, the degree of accountability because you’ve been included in it, and it hasn’t been imposed on you. And how that accountability then results in you being responsible, and I love, I always deconstruct responsibility and use it differently. I talk about the ability to respond. How do you have that kind of ability to respond if you haven’t been involved in the process, and so the one builds on the other. So we can absolutely see, you know, the whole inner part, the importance of that kind of where you think about yourself, what are the obstacles that block you, how do you observe them? Do you believe that that, oh, because also it’s now quite prevalent, kind of every leader has a coach. Do you think that the role of coaches is exceptionally important in this, depending on the culture?
I do believe that coaching is exceptionally important, because we need people to hold up a mirror and help us to discover what some of these beliefs and assumptions are. You know, sometimes we can’t see the label from inside the bottle, but I think an extremely underserved market is team coaching, and so I think that, yeah, team coaching is so, so, so important.
How do you think-
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I think that-
That-
You know, go ahead.
No, no, I’m listening.
I think that obviously having multiple modalities helps to fast track the, you know, time to results, I suppose, but I think that individuals, you know, leaders need to do work on themselves. And when we develop that mindfulness and the right mindset, you know, you mentioned like the, you know, leaders don’t show weakness or vulnerability as weakness. That in itself is an assumption, and there’s certain beliefs that underpin it, right? So it’s about how do we help change the assumptions? And that could take some personal coaching, but the team coaching also creates that safe environment where that trust can be built. And so by developing those three areas of influence that I just mentioned, it helps all phases of that, so for example, influence with others, and self-influence, we can see from that diagram that I just wrote, that that creates responsive influence, and it’s through responsiveness and not reactiveness that we can even engage in that conscious conflict, and be able to help people to make commitments to decisions, so I think that one, I think coaching, yes, is very, very important.
Okay, so what’s really important is that if we look at companies, and we kind of take, not just a visual snapshot, we go into the companies, and we take a look at what’s working, and what the obstacles are. I think the really good news that you’ve shared with us today is that it’s all can be influenced, I think that we can look, and it might start with not getting the results you need, and it all can be influenced in terms of strategy, in terms of purpose, in terms of behaviour, in terms of consciousness, in terms of your own taking a look at yourself. And I know that that’s what you spend a great deal of time doing is that team coaching and deconstructing where those obstacles are, and helping people make correction by developing self-awareness and feedback. The more feedback I get and the more aware I am, the greater the possibility for change. So just to close, Gilan, what would you say? Well, just tell us about the programme that you do where people can access you if they’re curious about what we’ve just said and want to take it further.
Sure, you know, people can go to my website, which is GilanGork.com. That’s my personal website, and you can learn more about me, but, you know, I’m developing a really great programme now around developing mindfulness, those five facets in the context of leadership, because I find a lot of science-based mindfulness work doesn’t give it in explicitly in the context that leaders find themselves in to have a working application of it. So, you know, that would be a good place to stop, and then, you know, in terms of the bespoke leadership programmes, you know, I usually will speak to leaders, and we will work together to create a programme that is totally aligned with their desired culture and strategy, because like I mentioned at the beginning of the call, high performance culture always has to be in the context of what the strategy is of the organisation. So to develop the best type of leadership programme, we would need to know exactly what that is. And that’s certainly a conversation I would love to have with more leaders.
Which is amazing, because what you’re saying very, very clearly, we started and ended with it, that there is a journey that has certain specific steps based on research influencers, whether it’s personal purpose, other related influencers and awareness. But definitely it’s not one size fits all. You go, you know, you look at it, and you say, okay, what is the real desired outcome in relation to your particular purpose, and strategy, and your raise on their card? So thank you for deconstructing and unpacking this. You can absolutely see how it really fits in to, and where self-awareness is central and relational building, and trust is also very important. So it was just really great talking to you, and there’s a lot more to say. I think we are going to look at a time of having you back to do more, Gilan, and thank you very, very much.
I would love to. Thanks for the great conversation.
Thank you. Thank you, thank you. I don’t know if we do have time for any questions. Are there any specific questions? I don’t know.
Q&A and Comments:
- [Host] There are. There are a few questions. So if you have a moment I can give them to you.
Q: We’ll start with Monty’s question. It says, “After 1994 in South Africa, have you worked with people from disadvantaged backgrounds who were catapulted into very senior positions in business and politics? If so, was your work life changing for them?”
A: - Excellent question. Do you want to answer that, Gilan?
Yes, I mean, working with leaders in South Africa, one will will definitely work with people who are catapulted, as you mentioned. And I think that with that kind of context in that situation, there are, you know, certain beliefs and assumptions that are made. And so it’s the same process that one would go through with anybody. It’s just obviously their context is totally different. So I would say that that’s not something that I have recently done a tonne of work with, so I can’t give you a recent example, but it’s the same process, and it’s very interesting, obviously the dynamics, you know, everybody, there’s certain pressures and certain things that creates for people that people wouldn’t necessarily see or acknowledge.
So what I would like to do is name those pressures, because I have had a situation, you know, where I’ve been in it, where you have to create that feeling of psychological safety through connection, and thereby encourage the openness through some sort of risk-taking. And often it’s the leader who has to take the risk first. If they open up and talk about their areas of concern and vulnerability, you find that it’s often more contagious than any virus. There’s almost a relief. Oh, well, if he can say that, maybe it’s okay. If he can fail and doesn’t have every answer, and he can learn through not knowing, maybe I can too. But what I found in that kind of environment is that this approach that you’re talking about is so necessary, but even more difficult. And I think that it’s even more difficult because of the word catapulted into situation, where there is more to prove, where there is such a need to show capability and strength, where there isn’t the kind of comfort in asking for help and support, where you say, “I have to show up with the kind of image proving the fact that I am right for this position. I have to meet all of these expectations.” So the ability to open up and develop some of that awareness based on vulnerability and trust, and thereby stimulate connection, is often more difficult if you catapult it into those positions because of the expectation. I think it’s definitely possible, and there’s huge relief when there is not only permission but encouragement to do it in situations like that.
Yeah, and I see similar things as well when working with people who are in multi-generational businesses as well. And so maybe there are different set of circumstances, but many of them, they haven’t used the word catapulted, but they, similar kind of situation, which is very, very common, and everybody’s, you know, different. So we just, it’s about just going through the process and finding out what are those beliefs and assumptions that’s causing the emotions that are creating the behaviours, and many of them, many of the under-the-surface stuff creates this distortion of reality that creates these self-fulfilling prophecies.
[Dorianne] Right.
And when I say distortion of reality, I mean, just that lens that their mindset creates just totally distorts the reality.
I know. That’s a real problem, I think, in both those examples of multi-generational businesses and being catapulted into these kind of positions, is that sometimes, those beliefs are true. In other words, they could be your assumptions and beliefs that are obstacles, and you’ve got to refocus your lens, or change the lens from rose-colored glasses to kind of clear-looking glasses, maybe. But sometimes it is based on a truth that, for instance, in multi-generational businesses, I do have these expectations of my son, and I do expect you to be able to do this and this. And it’s not just your assumptions, you know, and I do. And then we enter this other thing of how do you have what we call courageous conversation, for this not only the sake of relationship, but for the sake of the business too? You know, what would have to, you know, that’s not for what we are talking about today, but there are, I mean, many times those assumptions are just assumptions, but sometimes, they’re not. And then you have to have a different kind of intervention.
Well, you know, an interesting case, I mean, just for privacy’s sake, I won’t give all details, but I mean, there’s a case where a son is working in the family business, and he was told growing up how perfect he was, like he could do no wrong, and he really was a high achiever type, and he attached his self-worth to his achievements and what he had produced, but unfortunately, the unintended consequence from all of their positive validations, similar to what I had mentioned earlier on fixed mindset, is that, you know, he believed that if he was not demonstrating perfection all the time, and you know, then it meant that he would have an identity crisis, and so he then, so he was very, very hard on himself, but he over-focused on results, because with, you know, his results was either going to be validation that he, you know, is living up to this identity, and he forgot all about process, you know, so for example, failure is part of the process of getting results and success, but he became so fixated on results that he was very harsh not only on himself, but also on his people, and actually stunted their growth, and made poor short-term decisions instead of long-term decisions. So, you know, in that case, it’s about really digging into the what is the belief system, and that belief was, or the assumption that came from his belief, which I think is more relevant here, is if I don’t do something with perfection easily, then it means that I’m not who I have grown up to believe, and he would then obviously, all of those behaviours cascaded, so.
So you can see that that is a kind of belief, and wonderful writers like Brene Brown talk about the failure as the kind of heaviest armour to come to wholehearted functioning as you possibly can get, you know, and that people often give up, not failure, I’m talking, sorry, I mean perfection, they’re striving to perfection and often give up, because they’re not reaching the level of perfection which they can ever reach anyway, so there is that, but I’m saying, interesting case that you talk about, because 99% of the time, it is his belief, and it is his identity that he’s questioning, which is driving his behaviour, as you say. But on occasion, I’m talking about that very rare occasion, if you had to challenge that assumption and belief, it could be, it could be, it’s unlikely, a situation where you are not accepted, you know? I haven’t focused on all the things you are, the magnificent qualities that you are, the things that other people relate to that aren’t only concerned with what you do, or results, but more to do with the person that you are, and there are times where other people around you have maintained that belief by behaving in a certain way of dissing you and dismissing you for other qualities that you might exhibit, so some, I do hope it’s a bit very rare, and I know it is very rare, it is more about your assumptions and beliefs that aren’t true, and if you have that conversation, they say, “What are you talking about?” Of course there’s room for all of these other things without you being annihilated from the face of the earth as you think you would be, that you do know. But on occasion, we maintain people’s beliefs by the way we behave, and feed them on the outside as well. And I do not chase them.
Okay, Dr. D. and Gilan, I think that we’re going to have to hold it there for time, but thank you so much for your talk today. It’s been fascinating, and we hope to see you back at Lockdown again soon.
Thank you so much for hosting us, and Gilan, thank you so much for you. My head is buzzing around with a lot of information and questions that I still have that I’m going to mull over. We really appreciate your time, your wisdom, your expertise, and who you are. Thank you.
Thank you so much, and likewise, I really enjoyed this, and I’ll be back anytime.